Video: Using the Lens Correction controls

Here I want to introduce the topic of working with the Lens Corrections panel inside of the Develop module. So let's head over to Develop module, and then let's open up this panel. Now what's really fascinating about this is we have two different options here. We can either use a profile, or we can make some manual adjustments. You'll see that there are two different sets of controls. Another thing that's great about this is that correcting distortion and working with lens corrections really was limited to working in Photoshop until Lightroom 3.

Using the Lens Correction controls

Here I want to introduce the topic of working with the Lens Corrections panelinside of the Develop module.So let's head over to Develop module, and then let's open up this panel.Now what's really fascinating about this is we have two different options here.We can either use a profile, or we can make some manual adjustments.You'll see that there are two different sets of controls.Another thing that's great about this is that correcting distortion and workingwith lens corrections really was limited to working in Photoshop until Lightroom 3.

Now we can do all these things and more from right inside of this nondestructiveraw workflow, inside of Lightroom 3.All right, well first let's take a look at Profile.What Profile has to do with is auto correcting some of the things that happenwith certain cameras and lenses, or camera and lens combinations.And we all know that with wide-angle lenses there is a certain amount of distortion.Well what you can do is you can enable Profile Corrections, whether with awide-angle lens or a zoom lens for that matter.And when you click on that option, Lightroom will then help you determine aprofile in order to correct the image.

Here it's selecting a camera make, a model, and profile.Now if it wasn't able to pick that up, you can always click on thesepulldown menus and then make the appropriate selection in order to choosefrom these different options.Now not all lenses are covered, but many of them are, and you'll find that theseprofiles will really help you out with different types of photographs.Now right here of course, I'm showing this with a wide-angle image, yet keep inmind, this works with all different types of lenses and also all differenttypes of distortion.All right, well here you can see that it is indeed correcting the image.

Click on the Flip switch; there is before and then after.So it's improving the overall distortion and also the vignetting that wasoccurring from shooting with this wide-angle lens.If we want to dig deeper, we can go into these sliders.These sliders are going to be pretty subtle, but you'll see that I can changethe overall distortion amounts here, and I can make my own fine-tune adjustmentsin order to get the image to look exactly as I want it.I can also work with things like chromatic aberration which are little fringesof color that you can see around the edge of certain wide-angle shots incertain situations.

Here with this image there aren't any of those problems.So I'll skip that slider and move to Vignetting.We can use this to either work on vignetting to brighten it up or to darken it back down.And again, we can find just the right spot here.And all of these controls are working together in order to create a correction,which should improve our photograph.One great way to see the before and after is to press the Backslash key.There's before, and then there's after.Let's say that you like what's been done here, but you want to push things evenfurther, or make some more dramatic adjustments.

Well here what we can do is go over to the manual controls by clicking on Manual.Now although we are going to Manual, we're not overriding Profile; rather, we'reworking together with what we've already done.For example, if I want to continue to work on distortion I can do so by swingingthis one way or another.I can also make some changes vertically. You can see how I'm tilting theimage one way or another, and we can see how it's going to need to becropped off in this area.So when this happens, we're losing some information.But let's keep going, just so we can deconstruct these controls.

What about Horizontal?Here we'll see a shift from one side to another, and then also we have theability to rotate our photograph in order to change the perspective of the image.What about Scale?Well Scale can be helpful if, for example, we're losing some detail on the edge,well we can scale this up so that it fits within that specific crop area.Again, to see the before and after, press that Backslash key. There is before.There's after.The great thing about this is it is completely nondestructive,so if we want to change it one way and then perhaps another, we can do so inorder to come up with different interpretations or different variations with our photographs.

We can also work with the lens vignetting and here you can see we have theseLens Vignetting controls.I'll talk a little bit more about that later.Let's say that we made some changes and that we want to reset what we've done.Well to do that, hold down Option on a Mac, Alt on Windows, then click on theReset Transform that will take all of those settings back to normal.Okay, well what about this Constrain Crop option?What's interesting is that you can tie together your lens correction work with your crop.

For example, if I decide to remove a lot of distortion,well I'm going to see that I can't really have an image with all of this access area.Now I could simply select the Crop tool and crop that out.I could use my Scale slider to scale that so that I wasn't seeing the gray inthe background, or I can click on Constrain Crop.This will then make sure that when I make these adjustments, it's going to affectthe overall crop of the image, so that the crop is now connected to this manualadjustment that I made inside of my Lens Corrections panel.

Now just to illustrate this, let's press the R key in order to activate the Crop tool.Well here you can see that what Lightroom did for me was it defined how I couldcreate a crop, the largest crop size possible that would fit with thisparticular lens correction that I made.So it's synchronizing that with the overall scale, and also rotation anddistortion, horizontal and vertical changes as well.The great thing about this is that if we don't like the crop, well we can alwaysmodify it further by simply working with our normal crop techniques.

Let's say we want a little bit of a tighter crop.Well we could do that, and then we could press Enter, or Return, or double-clickinside of that area in order to apply that particular crop.So as you can see, we can work with this Lens Correction panel in some prettypowerful ways, whether to make some subtle changes or to perhaps enhance ormodify our images in some more creative or corrective ways.

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